Coaching And New Employees Shortening The Ramp To Productivity Transcript

One of the biggest challenges for any manager is to rapidly and effectively integrate new workers into the workforce.
…

One of the biggest challenges for any manager is to rapidly and effectively integrate new workers into the workforce.

This show discusses how professional coaching can expedite the on-boarding process by helping new hires strengthen core skills and adjust to the company culture.

Guests

* Joanne Dustin, Executive and Career/Life Transition Coach

* Dr. Michael O'Connor, Thought Leader

* Sue Schaefer, Certified Coach

Summary

Research shows new hires who were put through a structured onboarding program were more likely to remain with their company three years after being hired. Other studies show 90% of companies believe employees make their decision to stay within the first 6 months.

But what role can professional coaches play in reducing attrition and keeping new hires onboard?

Transcript

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0:26 Tom Floyd Welcome to Insight on Coaching.
Insight on Coaching explores the many facets, flavors and sides of the emerging
Professional Coaching field.
I’m Tom Floyd, the CEO of Insight Educational Consulting and host of the Insight on
Coaching radio show.
Today’s show focuses on the on-boarding process. In other words, how professional
coaching can expedite the on-boarding process by helping new hires strengthen core
skills and adjust rapidly to the new culture, environment, processes, and people that
surround them.
Well to prepare for this show, our research team did its usual searching to see what
interesting tidbits of information were out there related to onboarding.
Now our team came across some interesting facts that were summarized in a white
paper published by SilkRoad Technology titled Successful Onboarding: How to Get
Your Employees Started Off Right. Check some of these out:
Research at Corning Glass Works revealed that employees who attended a
structured orientation program were 69% more likely to remain with the company
after three years than those who did not go through the same program.
Another study conducted at Texas Instruments showed that employees whose
orientation process was carefully “attended to” reached “full productivity” two
months earlier than those whose orientation process was not.
In yet another study, Hunter Douglas found that by upgrading their onboarding
process, they were able to reduce their turnover from a staggering 70% at six
months, to 16%. These changes also translated into improved attendance,
increased productivity, and a reduction in their damaged-goods rate.
At Designer Blinds, an Omaha based manufacturer of window blinds, upgrading
the onboarding process played a central role in reducing turnover from 200%
annually to under 8%!
A 2003 study by Hewitt Associates demonstrating the connection between
effective onboarding and engagement revealed that companies, who invested
the most time and resources in onboarding, enjoyed the highest levels of
employee engagement.
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3:54 Tom Floyd In yet another benchmarking study published last year by the Aberdeen Group, in
surveys and interviews with senior executives in the human capital management
community conducted in partnership with the Human Capital Institute, 90% of
companies believe their employees make their decision to stay at the company within
the first six months.
The same study also indicated:
In 2005, 60% of companies did not have a formalized onboarding process
compared to 24% in 2006.
There were pressures to implement an automated onboarding process,
pressures including: improving time to productivity, improving retention rates, and
improving customer satisfaction.
Well it’s clear from these studies that the importance and value of getting the
onboarding process “right” is high – but what role can professional coaching play in
the on boarding process? Discovering the answer to that question is our goal on
today’s show, and we’ve got three guests to help us with that
So let me give everyone a quick overview of our three guests on today’s show: Dr.
Michael O’Connor, Joanne Dustin and Sue Schaefer.
I will start with Michael.
Dr. Michael J. O’Connor is an internationally recognized thought leader who has
contributed several different types of breakthroughs for producing higher personal,
group/team, and organizational performance as well as purposeful fulfillment. He is
often referred to as a practical, problem-solving visionary.
He is called upon daily to provide his expertise in the areas of personal, group, and
organizational behavior.
He has dedicated his life to helping others, of all walks of life, positions, and types as
well as levels of organizations, through his speaking, coaching, consulting, training,
writing, and published resources.
Michael has authored several books, including Managing By Values and The
Platinum Rule. In 2005, Michael introduced The Hiring & Developing Winners
Process; The Online Total Personal Global Profiles System (GPS); and co-authored
The Leader Within.
Welcome to the show Michael.
4:56 Michael Thank you, Tom.
O’Connor
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4:57 Tom Floyd Our next guest, Joanne Dustin.
Joanne Dustin is an executive coach, a career/life transition coach, and an
organizational development consultant with over 25 years experience in the industry,
most recently as the Director of Career Development for Keane, Inc., an information
technology and management consulting firm headquartered in Boston, MA with over
10,000 employees located in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and India.
Joanne designed, developed and administered Keane’s Leadership and
Organizational Review program incorporating succession planning, talent
management and executive coaching.
She has been a featured speaker at conferences and professional associations, and
has authored many articles, most recently co-authoring, with Elizabeth Black, “The
Career Collaborators Program in Action”, published in the March, 2007 issue of
OfficePro magazine.
She is currently writing her first book: “Life Beyond I.T”., featuring stories of people
who have left the corporate I.T. world and are finding passion and purpose in their
lives through new careers.
Welcome back to the show Joanne.
5:55 Joanne Dustin Thank you Tom.
5:56 Tom Floyd And our last guest, Sue Schaefer.
Sue Schaefer is a partner with JivaroCXO, a performance-based executive search
firm. JivaroCXO “onboards” executives to help position them to deliver results in the
first 90 days of employment and beyond.
As a former Fortune 100 company officer, Sue has more than two decades of senior
management experience.
She has collaborated with renowned leadership coach Marshall Goldsmith to
implement new workplace partnering and career development programs across her
500-person organization, was coached personally by Marshall early in her executive
career and is a certified Marshall Goldsmith, LLC coach.
Welcome to the show Sue.
6:34 Sue Schaefer Thank you, I’m happy to be here.
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6:36 Tom Floyd On today’s show, as with all of our shows this season, is going to be a group
discussion.
I’m going to pose questions to all three of you and as a panel to get your thoughts as
a group.
And the first question that I wanted to start out with, a very big picture question and
what that question is: when people hear the term “onboarding”, what do you think
that term means to most people?
In other words, how would you define what onboarding is?
Sue, let’s start with you.
7:05 Sue Schaefer I would say to me onboarding is really any process that will help facilitate a new
employee to be getting set up to succeed in that particular position.
So it would include acclimating them to the environment, to the politics, to the
processes, and all the normal HR procedures that need to be dealt with in
employment.
7:32 Tom Floyd Okay.
Michael, anything you would add?
7:35 Michael No, I think it basically is looking at culture fit, the fit with the job and the fit with the
O’Connor person you’re reporting to as the three key elements.
7:46 Tom Floyd So job, the person you’re reporting to and just kind of the fit within the culture and the
environment?
7:51 Michael Yes, the culture is the most important obviously.
O’Connor
If you don’t fit in the culture, nothing else matters.
7:55 Tom Floyd Okay, got it. Joanne, anything you would add?
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7:58 Joanne Dustin Well said, both Michael and Sue.
And in addition sometimes surreptitiously we want the new employee to be as
productive as possible as quickly as possible, among all those other things, but
bottom line is the bottom line.
8:16 Tom Floyd And do you find that there’s a little bit of irony in the fact that you want them to be …
or companies, I should say, want them to be productive as quickly as possible, yet
the onboarding process takes time?
8:27 Joanne Dustin Yes.
And in many companies they want to give as little time to that as possible and get on
with things.
8:34 Tom Floyd Yes, they just kind of want folks to hit the ground running, so to speak.
8:38 Tom Floyd Well, in general, and I’ll continue with you, Joanne, on this one, why is onboarding a
hot topic right now?
8:46 Joanne Dustin Ah, that’s a great question.
In part because of the unemployment rate being so low and the number of people
who have been thinking about leaving their organizations are anticipated to act on
that within the next year.
They say 50% of people are going to look to find other job opportunities this year.
9:11 Tom Floyd Holy cow, 50%?
9:13 Joanne Dustin Yes.
9:14 Tom Floyd And in your experience, what are some of the reasons for that?
Why are … is that half of the folks in the U.S., is that global?
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9:22 Joanne Dustin Well, it’s … the numbers relate to the U.S.
9:25 Tom Floyd Okay.
9:27 Joanne Dustin This is from Business Wire recently, and they … I think it’s the rate, I mean I’m not
quoting them, this is my assumption.
9:38 Tom Floyd Okay, got it.
9:39 Joanne Dustin I’m thinking that it’s because of the way they’ve been treated, since the situation was
very different when there was an oversupply of talent and organizations had some
latitude to be not as caring and not as nurturing of people’s careers as they may have
been in the past.
And people have had to do more with less, there’s been so much competitive
pressure among organizations that they’re looking to cut costs wherever they can,
and in part that’s driven salaries down.
So they’re feeling that hit financially as well as in terms of their futures, what their
career opportunities are within their organizations.
10:30 Tom Floyd Interesting.
Sue, anything that you would add?
10:33 Sue Schaefer Actually Joanne, you said that very, very well.
I think really it comes down to the two points in terms of attracting and retaining for all
the reasons that you just outlined.
10:45 Tom Floyd And do you find … and I know this came up a little bit on some of our shows a few
weeks ago when we were talking about the differences in generation … do you find
that what it takes to attract talent and retain it, are those consistent across
generations, for example, millenials versus baby boomers, or are they a little bit
different too?
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11:07 Joanne Dustin I’ve actually found – I don’t have a lot of empirical data on this per se, but what I
personally found is that yes, it does, it varies by generation.
What I’m finding with the baby boomers is basically they want to make sure that the
time that they have left in the work force is gratifying, satisfying, they’re doing
something good that they can feel good about and that they’re also making the right
amount of dollars to help them continue into retirement.
And then people just entering the work force, I’m seeing much more of a view of a
much more altruistic view of wanting to help the world and making sure that what
they’re doing for the majority of their time is something that is more fulfilling on a
global scale.
11:51 Tom Floyd So really making a difference.
11:52 Joanne Dustin Yes.
11:53 Tom Floyd Now Michael, anything that you would add in terms of why onboarding is such a hot
topic right now?
Michael, are you still there?
It looks like he may be calling back in here.
We’ll go ahead and move on to the next question real fast, and I know we’re about
ready to go to break.
But just to kind of start the conversation, what are some things that you’re seeing that
organizations are doing wrong in the onboarding process?
Sue, let’s start with you.
12:24 Sue Schaefer I think the biggest problem that I’m seeing in the organizations that are actually doing
and implementing an onboarding process is that they’re taking an approach of ‘one
size fits all’, and just implementing one major onboarding process and assuming it’s
going to work for your front line employee all the way to your executive.
12:44 Tom Floyd And finding that kind of cookie cutter type of approach really isn’t going to work
necessarily the same way for all levels within that organization?
12:52 Sue Schaefer Exactly.
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12:53 Tom Floyd Got it.
But I want to explore that further, let’s go ahead and go on pause right now. I’m
hearing the music for our commercial break.
Stay tuned everyone. More about the onboarding process when we return.
15:42 Tom Floyd Welcome back to Insight on Coaching.
For those of you just joining us today, today’s show focuses on the onboarding
process, and what role coaching can play in that process.
And when we left off we were talking a little bit about what some organizations are
doing wrong in the onboarding process.
And Sue, you had mentioned that a lot of companies tend to take a ‘one size fits all’
type of approach, and that that’s not necessarily a good thing to do.
What are some things that, if we take two different roles, like executive versus
individual contributor, when we think of the onboarding process, what are some
things that should be done differently in each of those two roles?
16:22 Sue Schaefer Well I think some of the success that I’ve seen in companies that have done a more
customized approach is for instance on the executives is that they’ve looked at why
people are failing in these new jobs.
You know, often they can … I think it’s close to 60% of the executives fail within the
first 18 months of their job.
16:40 Tom Floyd Wow.
16:41 Sue Schaefer And the reason for that is really a lack of clarity around the expectations of the job,
and adjusting to the way that work gets done in that new company and also making
sure you know how to really use the political acumen that you’ve developed through
your career in that particular organization.
So the companies that I’ve seen that have approached those problems and
customized an onboarding approach for the executives is that they’ve actually used
coaching in the first 90 days of the executives’ career with that company to help
really understand and align expectations across all of the stakeholders, for instance,
of the business.
Because often you have … the CEO would have a particular expectation of the
person that is different than the peers and different than the subordinates, and
obviously all of those people are going to determine whether that person is …
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17:33 Tom Floyd Ultimately successful.
17:34 Sue Schaefer Yes.
So people when they use that executive coaching to go in and actually work with that
person, it acclimates them very quickly, gives them a lay of the land so they’re able to
really focus on their priorities very quickly, whereas more of an individual contributor
or a front line person, for instance, sometimes that has more to deal with some of the
skill building and making sure they have the right skills in place, but also a lay of the
land from how work gets done is very important as well, depending on how cross-
functional that particular position would be.
18:06 Tom Floyd Okay, got it.
I definitely want to come back to many of those points, particularly around how
coaching can be helpful for example in learning the culture and getting the lay of the
land and things like that.
But Michael, I want to turn to you now, from your perspective what are some of the
things that you’re seeing that organizations are doing wrong in the onboarding
process?
18:29 Michael Well, most of the organizations are so quick to fill slots that they don’t really do a
O’Connor sound job in making sure that they have a good fit of the person in the first place.
And we know that research and authors of books like “Top Gun” has talked about
that.
And basically 75% of all hires are mis-hires, we’ve seen that repeatedly, and that
doesn’t change, it hasn’t for decades.
And so one of the things is really first making sure that the individual, they have a
clear set of expectations about role, priorities in terms of key results as well as the
critical task for achieving them.
And then doing a sound job in terms of both capabilities and the motivations that are
required for that. Most people I found in this business they are pretty good in looking
at capabilities required for performance, but they have a very limited and naïve notion
of the kind of motivations that fit both a position as well as for a culture.
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19:31 Tom Floyd One interesting thing that I’ve seen in some of our research referred to the criticality
of the first 30, 60, 90 days, for example.
And they use the analogy of the duck, how a baby duck will imprint on its mother so
quickly at the earlier stages in life.
Are there almost some similarities there as well, in terms of when I think of
motivation, for example?
You want to capitalize on new hires’ motivation in the beginning to keep it going?
20:04 Michael Well, the very first day we say is critical in terms of the performer with their
O’Connor supervisor, and so we use the tool called the ‘top choice tool’, and what we do is after
the orientation program occurs on the very first day, is you meet with them and look
at what are your key strengths so you can capitalize on them in having success, and
be satisfied in that job starting on day one.
And also, what are the key improvements required for ongoing improvement, to
indicate there is a performance culture.
Because you never get that opportunity again.
If you wait till three, six, nine months later to start identifying performance issues,
rather than indicating from our assessment indicate there is an upside opportunity for
improvement for you, and this is a performance culture at the beginning of day one,
then there is no resistance when you bring that back up later, so that’s a very
important thing in terms of developing a positive productive communications and the
person seeing that this is a job as well as an environment in which they are expected
to grow, but they also can have a winning career.
21:08 Tom Floyd Interesting.
Joanna, I want to turn to you next, and when we think about what some of the typical
activities, processes, tasks, things like that, that the “average company” includes in
its onboarding program, in those first few days, in your experience are we talking
about pretty basic things like orientation, human resources policies and procedures,
basic information about the company and training, blah, blah, blah?
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21:37 Joanne Dustin Absolutely.
You know, it’s been the bailiwick of HR for a long time, and were much focused on
filling out the right forms and signing your name on all of the forms.
And being sure that they knew where their office or desk was, and not … they would
provide some canned information about the company, and if the people coming on
board were really lucky, they got to meet with some senior level executives. More
often than not, that was done in the larger organizations by video.
So there wasn’t … it was pretty cut and dried, and people came to expect that in
onboarding, and they come in with the attitude “I have to go through this, but I’m
really not going to learn anything here”.
22:32 Tom Floyd So it’s certainly not something that a lot of people are looking forward to in terms of it
being highly exciting or engaging, for example.
22:40 Joanne Dustin Yes.
Sadly, yes.
22:42 Tom Floyd Now, what are some of the things that you’re seeing more cutting edge companies
starting to change or integrate into their onboarding programs to kind of move away
from that view?
22:51 Joanne Dustin There’s a lot of exciting stuff.
There’s the bleeding edge stuff that IBM does, you probably know about that.
Because the company that provides the software they’re using is out in your area.
And they’re doing a lot of virtual, I don’t know what you’ve heard about this, but they
have …
23:13 Tom Floyd I have heard about …
23:15 Joanne Dustin I know you’ve heard about second life.
23:16 Tom Floyd I’ve heard some, but if you can go ahead and give some examples, that would be
great.
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23:18 Joanne Dustin Sure.
Well, IBM has four programs they’ve launched or in the process of launching.
One of them is in China, and they’re using this tool to bring people together virtually
pre-employment.
They’re going to be hired, they’ve already gone through the process of selection, but
they’re not officially onboard with IBM yet, but they’re starting a community before the
fact to start to inculcate the culture, to what Michael was talking about earlier.
23:48 Tom Floyd So they’re courting them before they’re actually … before they went on the job,
before they’ve actually started.
23:53 Joanne Dustin Yes.
23:54 Tom Floyd And are people excited about that, or are they resistant towards that?
And what I have seen about that program, it’s coming back to me now, is that one
theme they were playing upon was that people are actually very excited and start to
do research about the company, things like that …
24:12 Joanne Dustin Yes.
24:13 Tom Floyd … Before they start their new job anyway, and this just kind of helps fuel that.
24:18 Joanne Dustin Exactly.
24:20 Tom Floyd Got it.
24:20 Joanne Dustin Exactly.
Another one in India, where they’re providing some support to them to simulate
projects.
So when people have come on board and they’re excited to get going, if they’re not
already assigned to a specific project, they can jump right in and do these simulated
projects and gain some experience that way.
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24:43 Tom Floyd So it’s almost like a safe environment for them to practice.
24:45 Joanne Dustin Yes.
24:46 Tom Floyd Oh, fantastic.
24:47 Joanne Dustin And then they have another that they’re launching that involves, to what Sue was
speaking about earlier, about the older population.
They refer to them as the aging IBM’ers.
I think they should probably get away from that label.
25:02 Tom Floyd Probably.
25:04 Joanne Dustin Again the same thing, using the virtual environment to connect them in a mentoring
relationship with some people who are coming onboard.
25:12 Tom Floyd Now that actually, I’m glad you brought up mentoring, because that was on my list of
things to bring up today.
So mentoring and coaching, at least with my consultant hat on, I hear use those
terms synonymously sometimes, and it drives me crazy, personally.
But from my perspective, I saw a very useful table that someone on our team shared
with me, that I felt summarized the difference between mentoring and coaching
nicely, because to me there is definitely a difference.
And what that table basically said is that a mentor shares his or her experience of the
way something is done. So in other words, this is what I found worked for me, as I
partner with someone to help them learn the ropes.
And as all of us know, a coach works with someone to identify goals and areas of
growth, now here’s something you’d like to focus on and more or less gently guide
them down an overall path of self-realization, self-realization definitely being key,
where the person who is being coached kind of learns on their own, based on what’s
inside of them, this is what will work for me.
So if we talk first about mentoring, are you finding the companies – it sounds like you
are – are including mentorship programs as part of the onboarding process?
Sue, what are your thoughts?
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26:30 Sue Schaefer I have seen some companies do, include mentoring programs, mostly with more of
the accelerated development programs, and also involved more in the succession.
So when people are changing jobs within a particular company, I’ve seen the
mentorship.
But I haven’t seen a tremendous amount, although it sounds like IBM might be doing
that around actually assigning a mentor to a new employee outside of an accelerated
development program.
26:59 Tom Floyd Michael, any thoughts?
27:01 Michael Two types of mentoring I’ve seen and working class the definition of mentoring is
O’Connor really focusing on personal growth versus coaching me for performance
improvement, meaning that in the mentoring relationship the client decides and in
coaching performance, the manager ultimately decides based on the performance
level.
But we look at mentoring in terms of it, as it relates to guidance for success,
especially younger employees around a company’s cultural or values expectations,
and taking individuals who are known to be highly aligned with those values and then
matching them up with individuals that they can help them guide them in the direction
that they’re going to get good results consistent with their career expectations.
And the other would be in terms of different roles which would take individuals who
are higher performers that wanted to assist others to aspire to that, almost like an
apprenticeship type relationship.
27:58 Tom Floyd So the ones, the people who are the exemplars, really kind of demonstrate the
culture and the values well.
And coming back to the imprinting thing, trying to get folks kind of paired up with for
some of the same reasons.
28:08 Michael Right.
O’Connor
28:09 Tom Floyd Okay.
Well, I’m hearing the music for the next break.
Let’s go ahead and go on pause.
More on the onboarding process when we return, stay tuned.
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31:16 Tom Floyd Welcome back to Insight on Coaching.
For those of you who just joined us today, this show focuses on onboarding, and the
role that coaching plays in the … or can play, I should say, in the onboarding
process.
Where we left off before our last break, we were talking a little bit about mentoring
versus coaching and the role that both can play in the process, and I want to go
ahead and move on to a conversation about coaching that really is kind of the meat
of what we want to get at in today’s show.
And the question that I have for the three of you is a two part question. Part one of
the question: are you finding that more companies are starting to integrate coaching
into the onboarding process, is part one.
And part two is: what are the business reasons or what value do you think that
companies are expecting to experience in doing so?
So what’s the business case that kind of sells them on wanting to integrate coaching
into the onboarding process?
Joanne, let’s start with you.
32:15 Joanne Dustin I think they recognize the value in coaching in general, but I don’t think they really
understand coaching.
And in many cases they’re looking at coaching as being skills focused, how to get
somebody up to speed on performing those tasks that they’re going to be asked to
do, rather than in the broader context that we spoke about earlier, that we all
recognize as being so important in terms of the culture, in terms of the political
structure and how to navigate it, and in terms of how they fit within the organization.
From the – part of what I do is focus on employee engagement – and I think it’s really
important, and this was touched on earlier as well, that people are engaged early on.
Michael, you said on the first day – absolutely.
Even maybe before the first day, because I think the whole process begins during the
recruiting process. When I was at Keane, we learned that.
We had a huge influx of new consultants coming into the organization and being in
the highly competitive world a few years back for talent, what they recognized was
the relationship began – we had our own recruiters internally – the relationship began
with them.
And we encouraged them to maintain that relationship after the person joined the
company as well.
33:50 Tom Floyd So the recruiter actually stayed in touch with them once they were hired.
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33:52 Joanne Dustin Yes.
33:54 Tom Floyd That’s a great idea, because it is kind of like that’s your initial point of contact into the
company, almost like your security blanket a little bit.
He walks you through the process, so from a human being perspective that makes
total sense to me.
Michael, anything that you would add in terms of what the business reasons are, or
kind of the business case that the companies who have decided to integrate
coaching into their onboarding process, what is the business case that really sells
them on that?
34:23 Michael Well, as Joanne said, my experience is, and the research I’m familiar with, is simply
O’Connor trying to get better results, and unfortunately, I think they focus on capabilities, as she
also mentioned, not on motivations that drive that.
And it seems to me another opportunity that they’re missing here is around the
concept of retention, is you gain additional commitment of the employees to the
organization, then they will get better results because they’ll reduce that loss cost of
valued employees, which is usually about three to twelve times of what you’re paying
them, both compensation and benefits.
This should entail their costs, so that’s a huge area, but again the work that I’ve done
with like Ken Blanchard and others in situational leadership, we’ve written about in
our book, “The Leader Within”, indicates that most managers are not really effective
coaches.
And in fact most coaches and internal consultants that are hired as internal coaches
aren’t very effective there either.
And that’s for the same reasons, that in effect a coach involves different motivations
and capabilities itself.
35:26 Tom Floyd And what are some of the things that an internal coach, just kind of along the same
lines, would be missing from that component?
Because on previous shows, we’ve heard guests definitely share that internal
coaches weren’t just as effective as external coaches, if not more effective. From
your experience, are you finding that it’s the kind of neutrality and “safety” that an
external coach can bring to the situation?
Or what are some of your thoughts there?
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36:02 Michael Well, I think it’s different, whether you’re an internal or external coach, that it must be
O’Connor a person whose perceived and actually is a helping, caring type individual. If you’re
perceived as a threat, no matter how capable you are, it’s not going to be effective.
The difference is, when you’re dealing with executives, at the executive level, they
typically are going to be leery of individuals who are internal coaches, and sometimes
it’s complicated.
When I’m working with a CEO, for instance, or a president, who’s going to coach
them on the inside?
Everybody reports up to them, so they’re not going to take the risk that is required
that an external coach worth their salt would.
So there’s that type of phenomenon, but essentially internal coaches, especially at
mid-levels and lower levels, can be very effective and very important contributors.
We know about half of all managers don’t want to manage.
That hasn’t changed again over the years, so having coaches now is another
alternate way of going. It supports the managers who are essentially task managers,
administrators in some cases, with people who are really going to help improve the
performance and reduce the risk of lost employees.
37:22 Tom Floyd And can you share any examples of kind of how you’ve seen when coaching was
integrated into the process, of where you’ve really seen a true network?
37:33 Michael Sure, as part of the management system you identify … a manager comes in and
O’Connor identifies, okay, here’s the performance of the individual and what level of
performance that he’s at, whether it’s a beginning or whether that person is below
average, or is average, or above average, or outstanding, for each of the different job
requirements as well as for the company values requirements, if they have identified
those, and if they have goals in each of these areas, and then it identifies what that
performer needs to work on.
Then the coach comes into play as the resource to help you develop action plans
and to execute those and frees up the manager.
And so that’s seen as an asset by the manager who is typically overworked, and also
seen as an asset by the performer because they now have the safe relationship with
a person who wants them to succeed, who isn’t evaluating them.
38:33 Tom Floyd Got it.
Sue, anything that you would add?
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38:36 Sue Schaefer Well, one thing that I would say is a little more of an intrinsic thing, is a lot of times
when people are coming into a position, they’ve obviously replaced somebody else,
and I think there’s a lot of garbage that has been kind of laying around from that last
person.
So often that can create a different set of expectations, and so I think really working
on those behaviors and perceptions in that first 90 days is very critical.
So when the coach comes in and works with the person, engaging the stakeholders
of this person I think is very, very critical, especially when you’re coming into an
environment where someone has been toxic to that place.
So this can take months to rebuild from that kind of an experience.
39:19 Tom Floyd So in kind of that role as the coach sitting down and kind of asking of a new hire, in
this case, what are some of the things that you’re sensing as you step into this role
might be going on, and let’s talk about that.
To try to “air out” what that garbage is?
39:35 Sue Schaefer Well actually I go in – what I do is I actually go in up front, before the person even
starts, and I talk to all the stakeholders of this person.
39:43 Tom Floyd Ah.
39:44 Sue Schaefer The boss, the peers and the employees of that person, and ask, “What are your
expectations that this person does?
And what advice would you have given what’s happened?”
And you kind of get a whole lay of the land that way, so that the person can
assimilate that and then say, “Okay, what are my priorities going to be?”
40:01 Tom Floyd And are you typically assigned to a person when you start?
Do they select you from a pool of resources they have available?
On the show we’ve heard both types of approaches, this situation being a little
different though, because they’re new to the organization, new to everything, they
might not necessarily know what type of coach might be right for them in that
situation, so are you finding that you’re assigned typically, or that they choose you?
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40:28 Sue Schaefer Actually I’m finding that they choose me for that particular one, but just because
there’s different specialties, but it’s something that can be built within the organization
itself as well.
There’s some real standard things that can be done, it’s just as Joanne and Michael
were talking about, people are so time constrained and resource constrained that a
lot of times they don’t take time up front to even identify the expectations of the
person that they’re hiring, at a detailed level to say, this is what I need from you in 90
days, in six months, in a year.
This is what success looks like.
41:01 Tom Floyd Okay, well playing the devil’s advocate a little bit and, Joanne, I want to turn to you
with this one.
We just talked a little bit about how the coach can help complement the manager or
even for those managers who might not have the best interpersonal skills, or who are
more task focused, in terms of fostering a relationship with the new hire, is there a
danger that the new hire forms a better relationship with their coach than they do with
their manager?
41:31 Joanne Dustin That’s a great question, and I would say hopefully not.
But I think it depends a lot on the manager.
And I would like to think the manager has his or her own coach that’s helping them
work on building the relationship, because the responsibility for building a relationship
is really with the manager. And they set the stage for that in the very first
interactions.
Typically they’ve interviewed the person.
42:00 Tom Floyd Right.
42:01 Joanne Dustin Before the fact, so it begins there and then continues on into that first day that we
spoke about earlier.
42:09 Tom Floyd So really making developing a relationship with the new hire a priority from a major
perspective.
42:15 Joanne Dustin Yes.
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42:17 Tom Floyd Okay. Well, I hear the music for our last break. Let’s go ahead and go on pause.
44:38 Tom Floyd Let me come back to one point.
I believe, Michael, you had mentioned – and Sue, you hinted at this as well – and
that was the role or importance of the development plans, or creating development
plans in the onboarding process. Is that something typically that all of you are seeing
that is really critical to insuring success during those first 90 days so either the
employee comes to the coach with that development plan already created or the
coach kind of facilitates, they’re in an environment perhaps where that isn’t
necessarily there already, the facilitation of creating that plan, that lists some of the
goals and things like that for the person to focus on?
Sue, let’s start with you.
45:28 Sue Schaefer The one caveat, I would say yes, and the one caveat is I haven’t heard it called
development, I mean people are very wary of the term ‘development plan’ because-
45:36 Tom Floyd So it could be an action plan or …
45:38 Sue Schaefer But yeah, looking at this is my first 90 day plan, if you look at the book for the first 90
days and all of that, they show you how you can actually develop the plan for yourself
of what you’re going to do, how you’re going to manage your own career in that first
90 days to make the right kind of impressions and deliver the right kind of results.
This just formalizes that, and I have seen companies begin to do that, and it’s
interesting because I haven’t seen them necessarily incorporate it into the
performance management system the way that I’m hearing Michael’s experience.
So it would be interesting, Michael, are you seeing them incorporate that?
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46:14 Michael In all of our clients, it’s a formal part of the process.
O’Connor
It starts with cascading down from business strategy to business goals and then what
pieces of that does an individual own, and as it relates to their position.
And so we have constantly these written expectations always at the start, whether it’s
the ones I mentioned capitalizing on a person’s talents and areas they need to
improve or it’s related to their specific job responsibilities.
And so we do a review, an ongoing review of that, and with consequences. It’s a
significant portion of those that are in most of the organizations I work at performance
improvement pay for performance type, so performance improvement is a key piece
of one’s income.
47:09 Tom Floyd And in terms of how the plans are organized, are they organized around competency
skills, for example, or does that kind of vary?
47:19 Michael It’s interesting, even in the area, I do a lot in the area of sales management, and
O’Connor most of the individuals that – whether they’re sales people or whether they’re top
directors of sales, managers of sales – most of the short suits are in the area of their
motivations, that get in the way of being effective.
Because of these motivations, they don’t develop some of the competencies like we
were talking earlier about collaborative problem solving.
47:43 Tom Floyd Right.
47:44 Michael And decision making, and that’s often because of their drive for personal control that
O’Connor gets in the way of that.
So that’s an example of the two.
They mix together, you can’t separate out a human being’s motivational capabilities,
one typically affects the other and they need to both be brought under control in
terms of written plans.
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48:04 Tom Floyd Well, and one of the things that our company says too, when we talk about
performance in a role, is we say that there are six factors that impact someone’s
ability to perform.
It’s 1. do they understand the scope, 2. and 3. do they have the knowledge and skills
needed to perform the role, 4. do they have the resources they need to perform the
role, and the last two, one is motivation and then one is alignment.
And so, if they’re not motivated to want to do their job or to succeed in the first 90
days in this case, then their performance is really going to be impacted by that.
Well, another question I wanted to ask, and this has come up earlier in the show as
well, is around culture, in terms of really integrating into the way things are done in an
organization is important.
And all three of you definitely highlighted that loud and clear. How could a coach
help a new hire adapt more quickly to a company’s culture or environment?
What are some of the things a coach would help to facilitate or introduce in that
case?
Joanne, let’s start with you.
49:10 Joanne Dustin I think helping them to become better observers.
I think when they initially go into the organization, their senses are heightened and
they are in observation mode, so they gather a lot of information.
But they may not know how to effectively process that information, and I think that
can be the beginning of that conversation, to help them sort out what they’re seeing
and hearing and feeling.
49:38 Tom Floyd So it’s almost like the coach becomes a sounding board and helps them organize all
that stuff that with their observer hat on that they’re taking in.
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49:46 Joanne Dustin Yes, but then also to assure that they continue that observation process, and that
they have – and I’ve seen this particularly in the IT community, because many IT
people are somewhat introverted, and it’s not as easy for them to be comfortable in
one on one communication – so encouraging them to move more in that direction
and to try to solicit feedback when they can about how things are going, and to then
be able to pull that back into the conversation and process that along with the other
observations.
So many times initially in an organization you have an idea about what the
organization is all about.
Sometimes I call it ‘the hype’ that you get at the recruiting process.
And then sorting that out into reality can be a somewhat difficult and sometimes
painful process.
50:49 Tom Floyd I was going to say, I can imagine that’s disappointing sometimes, if there’s been hype
that things are going to be a certain way, and once they’re in behind the scenes,
they’re like, wait a minute, I’m behind the curtain now and I’m not seeing or observing
the same things.
51:02 Joanne Dustin Yes.
51:03 Tom Floyd Got it.
Sue, anything that you would add in terms of how coaching would work with a new
hire to help them to adapt to a company’s overall culture?
51:10 Sue Schaefer Yeah, I think Joanne started to touch on this a little bit, I think we can teach them how
to have conversations with their stakeholders, and teach them how to solicit feedback
and keep that in front of people when it’s appropriate, how to ask the questions, how
to ask for specifics.
For instance, if a piece of feedback they’re getting is that you’re not empowering me,
say, for instance, that’s a common one we always hear about at every job level,
right?
To be able to ask, hey, what would that look like? What something like that looks like,
and then be able to again have an ongoing dialogue with their stakeholders about
that, that I tried this, did you see this happen?
I mean, all of that begins to help them change their behavior as well as the
perceptions of the people around them.
But those conversations are very key.
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51:59 Tom Floyd Well, and that kind of brings me to one last point here, and it’s around definitely
related to having the conversations, but it sounds like we’re also talking about helping
them establish relationships too, at various levels with their stakeholders, with their
managers, with their subordinates, if they have any, with peers.
So from your perspective, is that one of the areas of focus you’d recommend to
coaches to kind of hone in on as they’re working with someone during this first 30,
60, 90 days?
52:26 Sue Schaefer I actually think that’s one of the most critical points, and getting feedback on who
those people are, because what ends up happening is I think we all just naturally
gravitate to the people that think like us and that we feel comfortable with, and those
may not be the best people that we need to be aligned with in the first 90 days of the
business.
52:48 Tom Floyd So if you gravitate towards somebody you might not realize is cancerous, so to
speak.
52:53 Sue Schaefer Right.
52:54 Tom Floyd That that cancer or toxin could spread to you and actually impact your view and
performance.
52:59 Sue Schaefer Exactly.
53:00 Tom Floyd Okay.
Michael, anything along those lines that you would add around the importance of
focusing on developing relationships in the organization?
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53:09 Michael Well, yes, and I want to blend both – I agree with what my colleagues have
O’Connor mentioned – but one of the things I’d like to go back to is earlier we started the
program talking about 50% of all individuals are thinking of leaving in the next year,
and that’s a little low from the statistics I’ve seen in other research.
And basically in this other book that I co-authored years back, it’s now been
introduced in about 24 different countries, about the effort to do so, indicating this is
not a United States problem but a global problem, that book was called “Managing by
Values”.
Most people are not having a winning experience in their organizations, and we
found in some research just completed after three years of management training
development, that basically people do not leave because of a relationship with their
manager, it’s because of the relationship they’re having with the company or the
organization.
54:04 Tom Floyd And it’s funny, one of the common things you hear too is that people quit managers
not jobs, so what you’re saying is they actually quit the company, because of the
relationship there.
54:12 Michael Yeah, they’ll hang in there if they believe that the company is going to do something,
O’Connor because they figure that’ll take care of that manager, who will be replaced.
54:19 Tom Floyd Got it.
54:20 Michael But the problem …
O’Connor
54:21 Tom Floyd Well, I hate to cut you off, but we are at the end of our show today.
A huge thank you to the three of you for being on the show today, it’s been a
pleasure, and as always, a huge thank you for your listeners for spending time with
us as well.
For more information about our show, look us up on the Voice America Business
channel.
You can look us up on our website, www.ieconsulting.biz, and don’t forget you can
download the podcast version of our show in the music store and Apple iTunes as
well.
Thanks everyone, we’ll see you next week.
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